


Still Life

by h0ldthiscat



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M, art hoe Liz is my fav, post-series suffering and attempts at happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 04:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16967826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h0ldthiscat/pseuds/h0ldthiscat
Summary: Her hair is still pulled back in a ponytail and for an instant they are twenty-two again, her expression filled with the same fear and longing as the moment they met.





	Still Life

She is a focused painter. Her lips are a thin line and the radio drones in the background. Neither of them like silence anymore. When she paints she wears her hair in a ponytail, like she hasn’t in years. Not Nadezhda and not quite Elizabeth either. She’s someone in between. And she paints, wearing one of his old shirts, one of the two he brought. She swims in it, looking impossibly small and infinitely powerful. 

The canvases are modest in size; paint is expensive and unnecessary. But the Centre has made the two of them comfortable, well-looked after. The apartment is bright and clean and close to a supermarket that always has fresh apples. The bed is large, and at night they cling to each other like magnets, afraid of what will happen if they let go. 

He stands behind her chair with a cup of tea. Outside the sky is rosy with dusk, and she’s recreated the color perfectly, her brush moving in confident strokes. He kisses the back of her neck where new hairs curl towards her nape. 

“Hey,” she says quietly, eyes fixed on the canvas. 

“You should get changed. He’ll be here soon.”

“I know. This light is good. I don’t want to lose it.”

He settles into the armchair in the corner, watching her. Beneath his shirt her legs are bare, except for a pair of gray woolen boot socks. He is overcome with the need to tell her he loves her, but he knows she knows. So he sits and reads until she finishes her painting, swishing the brush around in a jar of cloudy water, the signal that she is done. 

He comes up behind her again, his arm settling across her chest, and studies her work. A lump settles in his throat when he sees it: the pitch of the roof, the windowsill, the glow from the lamp in the corner. And outside, below, in the driveway, a white car. A hockey goal. Two shadowy figures in the twilight. 

“It’s springtime now,” she says. She drops her head and kisses his forearm. 

There’s a knock at the door. He squeezes her shoulder and murmurs, “That’s Gabriel.”

When Philip answers the door, Gabriel says, “You didn’t have to come all this way to return the favor of hosting.”

Philip smiles. “But we did.”

Gabriel laughs and pulls him into a hug; the handle of the ceramic dish he brought presses against Philip’s back. They open a bottle of wine, Philip checks the chicken in the oven. Gabriel compliments the wallpaper in the kitchen. 

Philip is at the sink when Elizabeth comes in, and hears only Gabriel’s chair pushing back against the floor and a sharp intake of air from his wife, not a sob but something close. He turns to see them hugging, and they stay that way for a long time. When they pull back they both have tears in their eyes. 

“It’s good to see you,” Gabriel says finally. “Both of you.”

The painting in the other room catches his eye and she follows him in, talking in low but uplifted tones. Philip hears the sliding of canvas on canvas and knows she’s showing him the others. His own favorite is the view from the bridge, that first night. All the lights alive in the darkness, saying _welcome home_ , saying _you are a stranger here._

At first she’d drawn, sketched really. He’d find her on the couch with a pencil, drawing on the back of a bookmark, or a piece of mail. He bought her a sketchbook because he knew she’d never buy one for herself, and that she’d never ask. The paints and canvases had been harder to come by. Most of them are small, but he’s been able to find a few larger ones, even if they are costly. “What else are we going to spend it on?” he asked when Elizabeth protested. 

She and Gabriel wander back into the kitchen, talking about how the three years since he’s seen them feel like ten. 

“I wanted to come sooner,” Gabriel admits, and Philip thinks he might actually be chastened. “To see you, to say hello. But the Centre advised me to wait.”

They sit at the small wooden table and eat chicken with lemon, some marinated carrots. For a few moments it feels like the old days, those first few meetings when Gabriel had returned to the states. Elizabeth is more relaxed than he’s seen in weeks; she and Gabriel always had a special bond. She tells him about their plans for Odessa in the summer and she lights up, a peaceful smile across her lips, all tension gone from around her eyes. Philip can almost forgive Gabriel everything if it means she’s truly happy, even if it’s only for a few hours. 

“You two are heroes,” Gabriel says after the dishes have been cleared and a game of Scrabble sits before them on the table. Elizabeth doesn’t usually play but she joins tonight, her features soft. Her jaw shifts at Gabriel’s words, only slightly. 

“We were doing our jobs,” she answers evenly. On the board, she lays down estuary. 

“The Centre appreciates your efforts,” Gabriel insists. “And all that you’ve sacrificed.” He meets Philip’s eyes when he says this. A thousand retorts rise to Philip’s lips but he bites his tongue. He meets the old man’s gaze with an unwavering stare, and then Gabriel pulls an envelope from his jacket pocket. 

“This was the best they could do for right now, but we’ll keep trying.” He places the envelope on the Scrabble board and Elizabeth freezes. The package is thin, and from the size and shape can only contain photographs. 

“We didn’t… who authorized this?” Philip asks. Elizabeth’s eyes haven’t moved from the envelope. 

“I did,” Gabriel answers.

Elizabeth reaches for the envelope but she pauses and finds Philip’s gaze. Her hair is still pulled back in a ponytail and for an instant they are twenty-two again, her expression filled with the same fear and longing as the moment they met. She gives him a small nod and he takes the envelope in his hands; it’s lighter than he expects. 

“I can’t guarantee any kind of regularity, but… I thought you’d want to see.”

Just as he suspected: photographs. Five or six. Black and white. Taken from a distance. Philip’s heart thuds in his throat as he studies the images of his son: walking down the street with a passel of friends, backpack slung over his shoulder; sitting bent over a book at a desk in the library; driving a car Philip’s never seen before beside a vaguely familiar girl with an afro; Henry on the ice; on the ice; on the ice--

“Where’s…” Philip flips through them again, thinking he missed one, thinking they can’t all be of Henry. There have to be some of Paige. He can think her name but he can’t say it aloud, can’t bear to see Elizabeth’s face crumple. She’s grabbed the stack of pictures from him and grips them tightly, her knuckles white, bending the shiny surface, slack-jawed in wonderment at the image of her boy, her baby boy. 

“She’s been a little harder to track down,” Gabriel says, and reaches into his breast pocket again. A single photo this time, more grainy but in color. He and Elizabeth both lean in and squint at the figure with a ballcap pulled down low on her head, hair the color of her mother’s hanging down her back. It’s blurry, but it’s her. 

“Where?” Elizabeth asks, barely a whisper. 

“Two weeks ago, at a rest stop on the Blue Ridge Parkway.”

“Two weeks…” Elizabeth says, unable to conceal the awe in her voice. It was how she’d sounded when she looked up at Philip in the hospital and said in disbelief, she’s so tiny.

Philip’s throat constricts and he holds Elizabeth’s hand, Scrabble tiles jolting off their squares. Grief pulls at the corners of her mouth, making her chin quiver. 

“She’s not running but she’s not sitting still either,” Gabriel explains. 

“That was never her strong suit,” Philip says, his voice thick. 

Elizabeth makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and they sit like that for a full minute. Gabriel doesn’t stay much longer, and hugs them both before he goes, with a weariness that Philip doesn’t remember about him. A heavy shuffle in his step, his head low and his shoulders stooped beneath the mantle of his thick, gray coat.   
_________________

Philip towel dries his hair and puts on a t-shirt and flannel pants, but she’s not in bed when he exits the bathroom. He finds her in the other room, curled up on top of the covers of the bed that was supposed to be for--

“You used all the hot water,” he says, lying down beside her. 

“Sorry,” she murmurs, and pulls him closer. 

Her painting from this afternoon sits drying in the corner, the pink sunset the only thing he can see in the inky blackness. She is warm against his chest. She works a knee in between his and they shift. Lately it seems like she’s trying to fuse with him, like maybe if they lie close enough nothing bad will ever happen again. They can just float here forever in the bardo, close to something final but safe on stygian shores. 

“Can I ask you something?” he asks. 

“Anything,” she says. 

“Gabriel told me--a long time ago, he told me that you… that the first person the Centre picked for you--”

“I didn’t like him,” Elizabeth says. 

Philip smiles into the darkness. His eyes have adjusted and he can make out the moonlight on her cheekbone, her smudged eyeliner, a freckle. “Uh, why not?”

“He was arrogant. Too sure. He wouldn’t have lasted under deep cover. He wasn’t... right. For the job or for me.” She squeezes his knee between her own. “Why?”

“I just wondered if you ever… after all this, I just wonder if you ever wish you’d chosen differently.”

Her hand is on the back of his neck, fingertips pressing, insistent. Her forehead touches his. “How can you ask that?” she whispers. 

He can’t meet her eyes. “If we hadn’t been so… different at first, nothing would have turned out this way.”

“You don’t know that. A thousand things could have happened.”

“Yeah…” He doesn’t believe her, but she sounds so sure that for a moment, he thinks she might be right. She kisses him softly with her eyes closed, and he lets the weight of her body atop his convince him some more.


End file.
